


PTSD

by infinite_devil



Category: Halo
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-28
Updated: 2015-06-28
Packaged: 2018-04-06 16:58:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4229691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infinite_devil/pseuds/infinite_devil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stumbling back, he leaned against the narrow tunnel’s wall, letting the grenade launcher slide from his hands, then palms on his knees. He gasped at the air, straining to keep himself focused, but his thoughts edged away from him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	PTSD

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for descriptions of PTSD symptoms.

_He doesn’t sleep long enough to dream. when he awakens he feels a rippling undercurrent of anxiety - he doesn’t know these walls, these sounds, and it’s dark. darker than he’s seen in a long time, dark as high charity._

_Cortana must have known he was waking up because within seconds, the data chip resting on the stand next to his cot glitters with her blue embers, and she appears, small, and with her knees drawn up to her chin._

_The anxiety buried under his lungs disappears._

\--

The ground immediately reminded him of sponge cake.

John stood in the one spot, feeling his weight shift uneasily under him, with all the instability of a dessert spurred from a childhood memory. Were his audio receptors properly tuned (he silently appreciated they weren’t), he expected he would hear an unsettling, wet squishing sound when he moved.

His radio buzzed as it woke up. “She’s in there, somewhere.” Johnson’s voice cut through the air, laced with static, but John heard the sigh. It filled his helmet and settled. “Get her home safe, alright, Chief?”

The radio fell into silence before John entertained the idea of a response. As though one was needed. He fixed his hold on the shotgun he carried and looked over the edge of where the landing zone ended and High Charity officially began.

It wasn’t much to look at in that it was every horrible thing cobbled into one place. The collective level of fear it should have conjured was so great that it was nothing. He found that there was no single thing to be afraid of; he had been presented to a great machine of primeval terror that was so overwhelmingly horrifying on principle that instead of something he could name he was left with a low buzz of anxiety.

In short: he knew he was being watched by a thousand eyes.

He moved forward to get a better look at the misshapen blips in the fog, and the ground under his feet did what he expected it to. The blips were moving. Not toward him, not away; swaying in place so raggedly he thought he was imagining it. Waiting for a reason to attack.

The Flood acted on visualized motion, despite lacking functioning eyes, and John knew that as soon as he was glimpsed moving, the monsters would attack en masse, throwing themselves in front of his guns without a shred of self-preservation or strategy, driven by the hope that maybe he would run out of ammunition before they ran out of combat forms. Despite the lives of soldiers they imitated, they bore no resemblance to tactical prowess.

Not to say that they were weak: though the Flood were rotting carapaces of their hosts, filled with slagged organic material and the same phlegmy-blood that oozed out of the floor under his feet, from their arms jutted great boney mutations made of calcified tumors, often so broken that they formed barbaric claws. If one hand was left largely intact, the form would sometimes carry a gun picked up by the host. And they ran, uselessly, the legs just a method of getting closer to him instead of a tool to be mastered.

John watched the standing combat forms as they stilled. Stepping off the precipice, he shouldered his shotgun and sought to engage them.

 

* * *

 

_“Y'know, I’m thinking this ‘Gravemind’ believes in short-term solutions,” Cortana said. Her voice met its usual comedic lilt despite the desperate circumstances: the Flood were pressing in on all sides and his one exit was rapidly closing._

_John bludgeoned a wounded Jackal before pressing on into the next hallway. “Why?”_

_“These Flood are created by the hundreds, but they rarely live long enough to figure out how their own limbs work. It’s the principle of cannon fodder, but on a battalion-wide scale.”_

_The doors at the end of the hall slid open, presenting a pair of honor guard sangheili. Upon seeing him, they uttered their distinctive clan war cries and unleashed a barrage of plasma fire from their rifles._

_“Well, if we’ve learned anything,” Cortana continued distractedly, as John fired a burst at the guards and plasma filled the air, “it’s that it worked before. We’ve seen a lot of Flood and, well, zip Forerunners.”_

_John let his shields take the another hail as he sprinted back the way he’d come. Priming a plasma grenade, he chucked it in the sangheili’s direction and took the opportunity to get some distance without hellfire licking his heels._

_“Hold on - there’s something in the system-”_

 

* * *

 

In the hours before the ship had begun being consumed by Flood biomass, High Charity was a dimly lit, foggy mess of short-circuiting technology and a civil war between Covenant factions. After gunning through dozens of rooms filled with jiralhanae, sangheili, and Flood amalgamations of both, John had discovered through raw necessity that keeping out of sight could get him through a room unharmed while they fought amongst themselves. The Covenant factions were too engaged to notice him, but the Flood themselves simply lacked the sufficient organic tools to detect his presence; as long as he stayed quiet, he could avoid confrontation.

He just needed to sneak his way through hell itself without the devil noticing.

The ship rattled distantly and somewhere something shrieked. He heard the telltale scuttle of infection pods escaping the light.

John couldn’t help but recall the first time he encountered the Flood. Those forms were ungainly, flailing; unused to combat. Weeks later he would understand that without a Gravemind, the Flood he encountered on the first Halo ring were little more than bumbling corpses. And yet he had known - deep in his chest, shoved between his lungs - that they were something to fear. It was primeval. The beginning tremors of unease began in his hands and John pushed himself into the next room, and into High Charity proper, to dispel it.

It was difficult to believe that it had only been a week since he’d been here last. In that time, High Charity had been swallowed up; every surface lined with a thick, fleshy layer of some peach-colored material until any indication of Covenant architecture bore resemblance to an intestinal tract. Rotted meat under his boots. Where he stepped, it leaked a sort of bloody phlegm.

Of course, the last time he’d been here, there had been thousands of aliens living within the ship. Civilians, warriors, slaves. It appeared that the Gravemind had mutated all of them, and used what remained as… wallpaper.

On cue, a chunk of flesh tumbled free from the ceiling and struck the floor behind him with a definitive plop. John surveyed the messy result for the briefest of moments, captured by morbid curiosity. He was a seasoned soldier, and gore was nothing new to him, but there was something uniquely terrible about gelatinous, discolored flesh and the noises it made.

The room, albeit utterly unsettling, was empty. John scooped up a jiralhanae’s grenade launcher and continued on his way.

 

* * *

 

_“He’s setting up shop.”_

_John was sprinting for another doorway, combat forms wailing dejectedly behind him, when Cortana spoke up again. He cleared the door and it slammed shut behind him. Cortana’s influence. The lights on the frame flashed red and locked._

_“Are you communicating with the Gravemind?” John asked._

_“No,” Cortana said. “And I’m not going to try it, either. The Flood are having some sort of effect on High Charity’s systems. It’s…”_

_She trailed off and fell silent. John felt a frown tug at his lips. On Unyielding Hierophant, the stress of maintaining multiple tasks as well as being burdened by a massive data load from Alpha Halo had caused Cortana to briefly entertain the symptoms of rampancy. It hadn’t escaped his attention either that she had stayed silent since the tussle with the honor guards, hours ago, when usually she reserved a quip for every shot he took._

_Distracted soldiers were a recipe for disaster; distracted A.I.s spelled ruin on a catastrophic scale. And… she worked herself too hard, sometimes. They all had their breaking points, even if hers weren’t entirely physical._

_“Cortana?” John nudged._

_“…Sorry. It’s - distracting. There’s a Covenant A.I. in the system and it’s… particularly difficult to track.”_

_“I thought the Covenant didn’t have operating A.I.s.”_

_She didn’t respond._

 

* * *

 

His plan to keep silent worked well until it didn’t.

The room he left behind was filled with riled-up combat forms; with no solid surface to bounce off, their faint cries fell flat in the hall. The next room was a cathedral. John leaned against the wall with his gun held to his chestplate and he listened.

He had glimpsed a sea of shifting, mutated bodies with the flashlight on his rifle before he stumbled backward out of sight of them. The door took eons to close, giving him a glimpse of a towering ceiling, and the soft shape of pillars, all awash in a sterile glow from an unseen ceiling light. He had waited to hear the undulating shrieks as an entire horde of combat forms prepared to attack but he was left with the sound of his heart in his ears, thudding so loud to encourage a million quiet fears into existence.

John held his breath. Distantly, the Flood spoke to each other in garbled screams, anxious to find him. They answered each other, like wolves hunting what had escaped. Too many wretched voices to count. Except he knew, realized in the midst of the firefight, that there were thousands of them; dozens in the room before, dozens in the next, and still dozens upon dozens more beyond the walls of the hallway he stood in; all of them now acutely aware of a single Spartan buried deep in their High Charity.

A shrieking in his ear - no, the other room. _Not here_.

He ignored his heart pounding and checked the ammunition of the jiralhanae weapon - manually, his hand shaking just slightly as he unwound the string of grenades. John bit his lip in dismay. If he went back through the other room, he could find more ammunition, or a better gun. Or he would run out of ammunition - and in the process and get swarmed, and the cathedral would come to life with the sound of motion and snapshots of limbs, captured by the one ceiling light. He’d have to-

 _Stop_.

Intrusive thoughts. _You know how this works_.

Deep breath. Then, go.

 

* * *

_“It’s not a Covenant A.I., it’s the Gravemind itself!”_

_John tilted his head at no one in particular. He stood in one of the fast transports the Covenant used to get across High Charity, watching the moon-sized city breeze past. The silence had been unnerving._

_“How is that possible?” he asked._

_“I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like this, in any records I’ve pulled from Halo. I knew he could corrupt Forerunner A.I.s but I didn’t think he could corrupt an entire system! This…” Cortana paused, as if composing herself. “…this is… unprecedented.”_

_“Cortana, can it tell if you’re there?”_

_“I dont know, Chief, this is kind of uncharted territory here.”_

_John unbound the rifle attached to the magnetic nodes on his back and calmly checked the ammo counter. “Where’s the closest terminal?”_

_“Chief-”_

_“You are not staying in the system.”_

_He didn’t have to see her to know she would be pursing her lips and frowning at him. “I can handle him,” she stated._

_John realized that he too was pursing his lips and frowning - at no one in particular. She likely couldn’t see him any more than he could see her._

_“We can’t let the location of Earth fall into enemy hands,” he said at length._

_His weak argument was met with silence. John stared at the distant spire of the Forerunner keyship and listened until he heard it: a sigh._

_“That won’t matter, Chief. You know that, don’t you? You know I have to destroy High Charity?”_

 

* * *

 

John sliced through a dismembered Flood form and watched its mangled body fall to pieces.

Stumbling back, he leaned against the narrow tunnel’s wall, letting the grenade launcher slide from his hands, then palms on his knees. He gasped at the air, straining to keep himself focused, but his thoughts edged away from him.

Every muscle felt taut, every joint dully aching. And he was sweating - something in his suit malfunctioning, easing the internal temperature fractionally higher until his face was slick with it. He blinked rapidly, trying to keep his eyes clear.

He was so tired.

John took a deep breath. Righted himself. He picked up the grenade launcher, ignored the empty clip, and shifted his hold on it so he could use the blade affixed to the underside of the barrel better.

Stepping over the body of the Flood form, he surveyed the tunnel. It took a bend some thirty feet ahead and faded into darkness. Most of High Charity, thus far, had either had partial power or had been kept aglow by natural lighting. But there were some places where-

Breathe.

He had no idea if he was going in the right direction. He just knew he had to keep going. He could be so close. Maybe one more day of fighting, then he could rest. Just-

He just had to move.

 

* * *

 

_“You need to go! Now!”_

_John had time. He knew he did. He stepped away from the edge of the transport pad and ignored the Flood and Covenant fighting just over the rise, stepping up to Cortana’s tiny hologram projected on the alien pedestal. She had her arms at her sides - hands balled into fists._

_“We can chance a remote activation,” he argued. “You cannot be left here. The data you’re carrying from Delta Halo is too-”_

_Cortana took a step closer to him, her little glowing form gaining intensity - directed at him. “The Prophet of Truth is leaving. He’s decoupling the transport link. If you don’t go now you will not get another chance to leave this ship. Go, NOW!”_

_“The data-”_

_“Chief, leave me!”_

_He edged back. The sound of the keyship activating filled the distance between them. John tore his eyes away from her and bolted for the transport link, leaping into the glowing tube. He shot forward, propelled away from the city and toward the ship._

_Silence, again._

 

* * *

 

He strikes the hardlight shield.

Once, twice, not with the stock of his rifle but with his hands. Dull reverberations in his ears - but he can see her - curled up - a thin layer of light between them - and then -

The light is gone and he is left with an ember. John stared at it, searching for movement.

For-? She doesn’t breathe.

He faltered.

The half week he’d spent in the ship - fighting, shooting, stabbing his way through hundreds of Flood forms - abruptly settled across his back like a great weight, and forced him achingly to his knees. He leaned against the pedestal - to get a closer look, but also because he simply could not support himself any longer.

Despite fearing it, he had never considered the reality of loss. It had rested in the echo of every thought he’d had in the past two weeks, reminding him quietly that he might not be fast enough, strong enough, but it was never brought forefront because it was just… unprecedented.

He would get here in time because there was no alternative. Even now, he could not fathom hopelessness; he felt himself briefly caught in the grey, no-man’s-land of shock, but even that emotion felt dulled and tired.

His chestplate resting against the smooth, untouched pedestal, John was suddenly and violently aware of every bruise, every burning cluster of nerves, every cut not yet allowed to heal.

He felt… heavy.

John breathed slowly and -

She moved.


End file.
